raised wooden
dais or bed, like that in the coach-house, a good six feet square,
with sides to it, perhaps six inches high. Tara watched the making
of this dais, and saw the master cover its floor with a kind of
sawdust that had a strong, pleasant smell, and then nail down a
tightly stretched piece of old carpet over that, making altogether,
as she thought, a very excellent bed. And as such Tara used it by
night, but in the daytime she usually preferred to stretch herself
beside the writing-table, or on the rug by the door, where the
sunshine formed a pool of light and warmth on a fine morning.

Here it was that Tara took her meals, a dish of milk in the
morning, with a little bread or biscuit, and the real meal of the
day, the dinner, which the Mistress of the Kennels always prepared
with her own hands, so that it was full of delightful surprises and
variety, though everything in it had the moisture and flavour of
meat, in the evening. At about this time it was that Tara noticed a
kind of white sediment, quite inoffensive and not at all bad to
eat, in her morning milk dish; and this she welcomed, because in
some dim way it was connected in her mind with happy old days that
came before her parting with the Master, when she had lived with
him in a place not unlike this clean, fragrant down-land, which
stretched now, far as one could see on either hand, outside the
garden and the orchard, all about this new home, which Tara found
so good. (At certain times and in certain circumstances, some
breeders of big hounds believe in mixing precipitated phosphate of
lime with ordinary food, for the sake of its bone-forming
properties.)

To describe one half the many delightful incidents and occupations
which made the days pass quickly for Tara now, would require a
volume; but as time went the great hound tended to become less
active. There were any number of rabbits on the Downs beyond the
orchard, and at first, in her before-breakfast ramble with the
Master, Tara used greatly to enjoy running down one or two of
these. But after a little time the Master seemed to make a point of
discouraging this, even to the extent of resting a hand lightly
upon Tara's collar as she walked beside him; and, gradually, she
herself lost inclination for the sport, except where greatly
tempted, as by a rabbit's jumping suddenly for its burrow close
beside her. In the afternoon, when Tara generally went out with the
Mistress of the Kennels for a goo